As long as Obduction could possibly take you without a guide, looking up the solutions would complete the game in a fraction of the time. It’s a complex system I’m not sure if I fully understand, but I fail to see most average players getting this one without at least looking up a hint. There’s one particular puzzle that is strictly mathematical in nature, utilizing an alien base 4 number system (instead of base 10, as humans use). It makes it too easy to skim over important plot points just because it is inconvenient to read it. Subtitles for in-game text would have been a nice addition for accessibility. I did run into an occasional issue where these in-game sheets of paper were hard to read, whether it was too small on my TV or just illegible handwriting. Why and how a particular door was locked or path was blocked off is reconciled in the narrative, told through journals, sheets of paper and other bits around the world. Most every puzzle in Obduction helped me to gain a better understanding of the world, or sometimes an understanding of the story led to figuring out a puzzle solution.

It’s an iterative cycle that, for better or worse, is quite clear in Obduction. He wants to puzzles in the world to feel inherently connected to telling the story, that story to be supported by the environment, and the environment to make for good puzzles.

As I discovered in my interview with Rand Miller at PSX last year, he values a balance of environment, narrative, and game design. Balancing DesignĪs a game developer, there is such thing as gamification, that is to say, compromising the story or world for the sake of game design. It was, in fact, walking down one of the narrow metal bridges in the foggy granite canyon in Kaptar (the second area) that really hammered the Myst/Riven connection home to me, making me pine for the more innocent days of my youth. Each new area is unique, going from the brightly lit desert town to a mist filled haven built from stone and steel, and more later in the story.

That isolated expanse persists through Obduction. Cyan is great at creating mysterious civilizations that were once thriving and are now desolate. The first time you teleport to another world in Obduction feels just like unlocking those books to other ages in Myst.

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